


Undisclosed Desires - A Resistance AU

by kaijucade



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Alternate Universe - Werewolves Are Known, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Mentions of Suicide, Minor Character Death, Resistance, Weapons, brief descriptions of bodily injuries, brief descriptions of violence, casual mentions of drugs, human resistance, mentions of abuse, mentions of torture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-15
Updated: 2014-06-17
Packaged: 2018-01-24 21:20:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 19,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1617461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaijucade/pseuds/kaijucade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a world where humans are now an endangered species and werewolves have taken over, a resistance is forming. When Peter Hale, a high ranking general in one of the most powerful werewolf packs, learns of the resistance, he sends his nephew, Derek, to infiltrate their camp and bring them down from within. Derek is more than up to the task, ready to prove himself to his uncle and their pack. What Derek wasn't expecting was to grow to admire the resilience of the humans and their will to fight and live. And he definitely wasn't expecting to fall for their second in command - the loud, obnoxious, sarcastic, smart, witty, and gorgeous - Stiles Stilinski - or that Stiles might just return his affection. What will happen when Stiles discovers Derek is the very creature he’s been raised to hate? Will Derek betray his own pack to save the human he was never supposed to care for? Could their love be the very thing so desperately needed to bring together two warring factions and end a decades old feud?</p><p>Inspired by: <a href="http://bilesandthesourwolf.tumblr.com/post/85506571069/in-a-world-were-humans-are-now-an-endangered">bilesandthesourwolf</a> <3</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Make Yourself Useful

Derek Hale stalked back and forth in the foyer of Hale House, headquarters of the local Lycan Regime. Werewolf was the standard everyday term, but when wolves had usurped humanity as the dominant species across the continent twenty years ago, a shiny official name was chosen. A name that spoke absolute authority and control, that instilled fear in the weak hearts of the humans. And yet, almost two decades later, as with any stubborn cockroach, there were still pockets of resistance, including the largest holding in Beacon Hills. The city was just a half hour drive from Hale house, off the Beacon Hills Preserve that the wolves had full control over. The city was divided, thick walls made up of every scrap of metal, rebar, and available concrete shielding the humans from a proper werewolf assault. Beacon Hills had been overlooked during the first years of the takeover. An inconsequential and quiet valley town in California that the Hale pack had called home for years before the fighting. Now it was the mission of the Hale pack, those that were left, to eradicate the human resistance in the area. Take back the city, and the Hale pack would be rewarded most handsomely for their service to the Regime.

Derek’s uncle was screaming in the dining room, his sneering tone penetrating the wood doors. Derek could visualize the room, dominated by a large table covered in maps and tokens plotting out the positions of important humans, as well as high priority targets like the hospital, which was inside the walls. If the humans hadn’t secured the hospital in the early days of the war, they would probably have been taken out by this point. The hospital was the beating heart of Beacon Hills, run by Melissa McCall, Priority Target 3. She was involved with Priority Target 1, Sheriff Stilinski, a man who had, by popular vote, assumed control of the human resistance front. Take either of them out, and the humans’ morale would be dealt a possibly fatal blow.

The doors blew open as Peter Hale catapulted the messenger across the foyer. The man was about thirty, grizzled face covered in an unkempt beard and wearing muddied clothes. Derek sniffed and noticed that the darker brown on the man’s coat was blood. Derek reached down to help the man up.

“Don’t you fucking bother,” Peter growled. “Get out of my sight.” This was directed at the disheveled man, who gladly exited the house, even with his tail between his legs.

Derek straightened, adjusting his jacket as he turned to face his uncle. At the man’s continued scowl, Derek snapped to attention, arms behind his back, shoulders and neck stiff. Peter growled low, and turned, not bothering to tell Derek to follow. Knowing he would.

Derek could feel his heart quickening in his chest as he entered the strategy room. He swallowed, hoping it wasn’t enough for his uncle to say anything. The tokens on the map were a mess, most scattered on the floor. A mirror that hung over the empty fireplace was newly cracked, splitting his uncle’s image in two. Peter Hale placed his hands on the table, his eyes flickering over the map of Beacon Hills and the surrounding area. Another sneer marring his handsome features. Derek couldn’t remember ever seeing his uncle smile.

“You called me here, Unc-General Hale?” Derek cursed himself for the slip. It was only recently that Peter had insisted he call him General, even when no one else was around. It was another pit in the smoking crater that was their relationship.

“Yeah, yeah, I called you here,” Peter said, staring at the map, looking like he wanted to flip the damn table over, rip through more inanimate fucking objects to vent his rage.

Before Derek could attempt an inquiry again, Peter spoke. “They’re dead. Our alpha pack. All of them. Fucking dead.”

Derek’s eyebrows rose. Ennis. Kali. Even Deucalion? Impossible.

“What—how?” Derek set one hand on the table as well, for support. The Alpha Pack had been one of their greatest assets. Powerful werewolves who had gained their extreme strength by sacrificing the weaker members of their respective packs. With them gone… it certainly would cause some upheaval in the coming days.

“Does it matter?” Peter’s ice blue eyes pierced Derek. “It was the Argents, of course. What did you fucking expect? And it’s not just that. They’re getting reinforcements. From Europe.” Peter rolled his eyes. “Just what I need. A bunch of Argents with poncy accents parachuting into our territory.”

Derek clenched his fists. The Argents were a family begrudgingly feared by werewolves. Effectively the boogie man in many a young wolf’s bedtime story, the Argents were an old family, humans that had been hunting wolves for centuries. They had even tried to warn their brethren about the coming war, but had been laughed off. More Argents was never a good thing.

“What can we do?” Derek asked, trying to keep his voice deep, serious, when really he could feel his legs threatening to shake, and his throat was suddenly dry.

“What can we do?” Peter laughed, a sharp bark more than anything. “Don’t you worry about what this pack is going to do to save our people. I’ve chosen my units, I’ve given the go-ahead for several attacks and we’re shoring up our supplies. What can you do?”

Peter stalked around the table, leaned into Derek’s face. His breath smelled of copper and fear. “I want you to infiltrate the human camp, bring them down from the inside. Think you’re up to that, pretty boy?”

Derek leaned back, once more raising his eyebrows. “How?” The only word he could really get out at the moment.

“Do I have to think of everything for you? Take Lahey. Act like you captured him. Earn their favor.” Peter’s claws were out as he clenched and unclenched his fists. He was a roiling mass of muscle, too close for Derek’s comfort, but he couldn’t pull much farther away. He still had it in him to understand just what he was getting himself, and his friend, into. 

Isaac Lahey was a broken soul wearing the face of an angel. He had the bluest eyes, but eyes that were a true selfless blue, untainted and unspiked by causing the death of an innocent. He sported blond curls and sharp cheekbones, cheeks that had felt the harsh fists of a father at an early age. The abuse his father dealt had caused him to find a sympathetic, possibly deranged, wolf, to beg for the bite. To turn so that he could live free. Derek was fairly certain it had been his mother Talia who had given Isaac the bite, but they hadn’t spoken of it, the better to preserve the sanctity of her memory. Whoever had given Isaac the bite, it didn’t matter. He was a mutt, useless, bitten, not born. He was a second-class wolf, regardless of who he managed to curry favor with. If General Peter Hale hated you, you didn’t stand a chance.

But Derek had stood up for Isaac. Had taken him into his pack of misfits. Mutts all and one girl who, although true born, turned out to carry the shift of a coyote inside of her. Isaac was accepted in Derek’s pack, even loved, but it looked like he wasn’t safe.

“What if they kill him? How do I—”

“Do I look like I care?” Peter interrupted. “Do you think anyone will care? This is your mission, Derek. This is the task I am assigning you. Infiltrate the humans, feed us appropriate intel, help us crush the last of these pathetic mites before the leaders of the Regime swoop in and crush the Hale line along with them.” Peter put an iron grip on Derek’s shoulder, his claws sinking into Derek’s flesh, but not piercing the skin. “Make yourself useful. Make me… proud.”

Derek’s eyes flickered up to stare into Peter’s. He swallowed. “Yes, General Hale, I’ll do my best.”

“Don’t do your best. Get the job done. Kill as many as you can when the time comes.”

As soon as Peter had finished briefing Derek on some specifics and he was dismissed, Derek made for the front door to Hale House. Peter’s final missive to him echoed through the door of Derek’s childhood home, settling on his shoulder’s like a cloak of death.

“Don’t fuck up.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hullo, readers! I'm so excited to be writing this fic. I've mapped it out so it will be completed <3 I'm hoping to post a chapter at least every other day, life permitting. (I'll also be alternating it with my other fic until that one is done.) Thank you so much to **bilesandthesourwolf** for inspiring me to write this and thank you **Skaboom** for being a fab friend and beta.
> 
> Please let me know if you would prefer any added tags. I'll add them (and make a note) about any tags I think I should add as I keep writing.
> 
> Let me know what you think! And thanks for reading :o)


	2. He's My Brother

Stiles was plunging the lead of the mechanical pencil into his bare arm over and over, making it disappear, a childhood game of pretend shooting up that was somewhat therapeutic at the moment in its repetitiveness. He was in Beacon Hills Hospital waiting for Lydia Martin to return with his blood work. Eventually Stiles turned to throwing the pencils into the ceiling’s soft tiled squares. He had eight in an almost smiley when Lydia, her red hair always magically curled and bouncy swishing about her shoulders, entered the room. She smiled sympathetically at Stiles.

“You know, we only have so many of those left. I would appreciate it if you could find something less—annoying to occupy your mind. I’m too short to get those down myself, even with standing on a ladder.” Lydia adjusted the thin file she held in her hands as she spoke, trying to catch Stiles’ eye, but unsuccessful.

Stiles crossed his arms. “Just hit me with it, Doc. Did the claws go deep enough?”

Lydia flipped open the file, as if she wasn’t 100% sure of its contents, even though Stiles knew she had basically a photographic memory. “No, Stiles, you’re clear. No howling at full moons in your future.”

“Ah, I wouldn’t say that, I find the right girl, we get a room in this place to ourselves,” Stiles gestured at Lydia, knowing she would laugh it off. Knowing she felt the same way. That maybe once, long ago, they were on similar paths, they could have gone the traditional route, fallen in love, popped out a few kids, died together in matching plots. But soon enough childhood had ended. The reality of their world hit them, with bloodied teeth and raking claws. They were no longer children playing at happy families. He was a boy with a few gouges in his leg; she was a girl fighting like hell to find a cure for lycanthropy so she could wake up her sleeping beauty, resume her childhood fantasy of getting to keep her loved one close.

“How is he?” Stiles asked. Since he knew he was clear, he was turning his thoughts back to his mission, but first, he had to ask. He had never been a fan of Jackson Whittemore, too much douche in his bag of tricks, but Stiles loved Lydia. He wanted her to be happy. If anyone deserved happiness at the end of all things, it was her. You couldn’t help who you loved. Falling for a true born wolf that had been raised by humans, unaware of his status until puberty hit, now slumbering in an induced coma to keep from turning, from hurting anyone else – well, that was a rough fucking card out of all the other cards to pick from such a stacked deck.

“He’s stable. After the scare with the mountain ash, we’re going to pursue other avenues but yeah… he’s alright… how are you Stiles?” Lydia’s warm brown eyes were patient and caring. Stiles closed his own. He didn’t like to look at people when he felt like he was about to cry.

“He’s my brother, Lydia. I feel like… my fucking arm’s been ripped off.” Stiles bit his tongue to divert some of the pain to a different source. He also felt like gripping the gashes on his thigh, but Lydia would just yell at him for messing with his sutures.

Two weeks ago, Stiles’ unit had been ambushed. Really, it was Scott’s, but Stiles’ status as the Sheriff’s son gave him a leg into co-captaining their own unit of badass hunters. These were boys that had been raised from a young age to fight, to shoot, to kill every furry bastard running through Beacon Hills. Scott was a great brawler, a great motivator, and Stiles was a near-perfect marksman, getting shots off faster than anyone else. They had Danny, when he wasn’t occupied with his new role as head of perimeter security, for tactical assessment and planning. The few other guys in the unit were strong, loyal, and good at what was expected of them. It had been a routine patrol, a routine day. The sun had been shining, the air had been clear.

So how in the holy hell had Scott been taken? How had Stiles’ last sight of him been a wolf bearing down on his side, teeth sinking deep, infection deep, turning deep. Stiles had gone berserk. Broken formation, thrown himself in amongst the wolves. It was a miracle he got out of there with what amounted to a scratch. It was pathetic that he was safe, back behind the wall, while his brother was out there, dying, dead, one of them.

Lydia reached out a gentle hand to Stiles, touched his shoulder. “Anything you need, you just let me know.”

“How ‘bout a bottle of morphine, Doc? I’ll grab the funnel.” Stiles cracked a small smile when Lydia punched his shoulder softly.

There was the pounding of feet through the hallway outside. Stiles was instantly on alert. He strode forward, into the hall, didn’t hear Lydia’s protest.

“What is it?” Stiles barked after Danny, who slowed, signaling to the boys from their unit to stop as well. They were all here, patched, ready to roll out. “I’ll grab my gear, yeah?” Stiles said, stretching his arms over his head, cracking his back. “It looks like you’ve got some good intel on where they might be?”

“It’s possible,” Danny slowed his speech as he saw Lydia shaking her head, but powered through, “that they’re holding Scott at the rail yards. We’ve seen an unusual amount of wolf activity in that area. If they turn-attacked Scott without orders, if they’re not sure what to do with him as he struggling through… we think they might have decided to wait to take him back into wolf territory. He’s a high priority target, Stiles… they’re not planning to outright kill him.”

Lydia looked ready to lay into Danny, but Stiles shushed her. There were too many people, Lydia, his father, even Melissa, ready to deter Stiles from doing what needed to be done to save Scott. “I’ll catch you at the main doors in five.”

“Stiles, no, wait!” Lydia gripped his arm, harder than she ever had. “If you’re heading out… you’re taking some wolfsbane bullets. You can take down a wolf hard with them, but they shouldn’t die like with silver, especially if we extract them as soon as possible.”

Stiles looked at Lydia, looked around to his boys. “I’m saying, Stiles,” Lydia loosened her grip on his arm. “That you can bring the wolves in for questioning. If you don’t find Scott out there… you can be damn sure we’ll get it out of whoever you bring in.”

Stiles smiled. His smile grew into a hard grin. “Did I ever tell you, you’re the fucking best?”


	3. Don't Be Stupid

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please take note of the added triggers. Thank you for reading!

Allison Argent was sitting on the hood of Stiles’ blue jeep when the unit traipsed through the hospital’s front doors. Her compound bow was delicately laid over her lap, her gloved hands gripping it firmly. She smiled grimly at the gun and knife-toting crew. Danny carried a _bō_ staff on his back. They had a few flash grenades as well. Stiles had wanted to bring everything from the weapons room – frag grenades and poison dart guns, throwing stars and a length of rope, which everyone decried as being fucking stupid. But they had to travel light and fast, so grabbing extra, heavier guns wasn't an option. A hand gun for everyone and a rifle with a scope to share. Stiles hoped it would be enough. They had Lydia’s wolfsbane bullets. Those would have to be enough.

“Glad you’re here,” Stiles said as Allison gracefully hopped off his car.

“Where else would I be,” Allison said, smiling, her eyes dark with fear but determined.

Allison and her parents had broken through wolf territory a year ago to join up with the Beacon Hills Resistance. Scott had been instantly smitten with the beautiful girl, her sparkling eyes, flowing black hair, optimism and sweetness. Their relationship had blossomed even under Chris Argent’s watchful, and sometimes reproachful, eye. He trusted his daughter to make smart decisions, but he also didn’t want either young person to fall in love. Love in this world was dangerous, a liability. Love was parallel to hope; take either away and your will power would crumble, the fight for freedom could be affected. Chris Argent had been raised on the ideology that survival of the whole was the most important. Allison and Scott, even so young, were realizing that what kind of life was that? Compromising passion and love to eek out another day with only fear and gritted teeth to see you through?

Stiles thought they were both such big dorks.

“Your father know you’re heading out with us?” Stiles asked as he slid into the driver’s seat. Danny took shotgun. Allison and Greenberg climbed into the back, while the other half of the unit nabbed another car.

“Does yours?” Allison tilted her head in each passenger’s direction. They all had at least one parent living.

“Nah, we’ll be back before they even notice we’re gone.”

“Damn right,” Danny said, slapping the support bar of the jeep as they set out.

Allison was silent during the trip, keeping a keen eye on their surroundings. Stiles and the others were watching as well, but they chatted, about inconsequential things. Who was sleeping with whom. Who was stealing extra rations from the commissary. They also went bits of the plan as they drew nearer to the rail yards. Danny brought up Melissa McCall’s successful abdominal repair surgery on a shrapnel victim during a blackout a few weeks back. Allison’s jaw clenched at the story, but she smiled into the rearview mirror when she locked eyes with Stiles.

Stiles loved Melissa like a mom, even as he felt the shape of his own mother gouged out of his heart, even though it had been almost eight years. Eight years since he had watched her die. He had been a child, helpless, useless. He was none of those things in this moment. He would save Scott, bring him back to their home, to his mother and to Allison. Allison, who had lost her mother as well. Victoria Argent had been bitten on the day of a full moon. There had been fighting that day, distractions, no easy avenues to the hospital. Victoria had taken her own life as the full moon rose, held in the arms of her husband, staring into the eyes of her daughter. The Argents were that true to their cause, to their belief that all werewolves, even those that had been beloved moments before, should die. 

No one was going to die today because of a pesky little werewolf bite. They had the wolfsbane bullets. They had time to get Scott back to Lydia and her lab. Failing Scott was not an option.

Stiles swerved to avoid the slain deer in the middle of the road.

“Fucking hell!” Stiles heart was thundering as he slammed on the breaks, not quite sure who else had thrown up a lung yelling. “Everyone okay?!”

He looked around at them all. Greenberg was looking a bit green but everyone was okay, just a little jolted. The follow car with the other guys had slowed to a stop. The driver poked his head out and gestured questioningly.

“Just a minute!” Allison called. She hopped from the Jeep and examined the kill. “This is pretty fresh. Looks like it was probably clipped by a passing car, broken neck. We should pack this up. It’s good meat.”

“What?! We don’t have time for that. Alli.” Stiles was shaking his head, but Danny was already slipping from the Jeep, jogging over to the carcass as well.

“We’ll move it into the back of the bigger car. We haven’t had a drop from the outside in weeks. Our gardens are doing fine, but a feast like this? It’ll boost morale.” Danny spoke with such authority that Stiles was almost ready to help.

“Look, we’re almost to the rail yards, just the next two blocks, to the right. I’m going to jog ahead, take a look around, I’ll be back to see how far you’ve gotten in ten minutes.” Before Stiles could really hear any of their protests (Allison had definitely shouted “Don’t be stupid!” after him) he was off down the road, a steady pace, quiet, measured breathes. He hated running, jogging, you name it. But it was a necessity. He had to find Scott.

He kept his gun drawn the entire way there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for the lovely comments on the prev chaps! They rly made my day! I'm super excite for this story and I'm so happy that people are enjoying it :o)


	4. The Fail Pack

“Do you trust me?” Derek said the moment Isaac opened the door to his room. The blond boy’s hair was floofed on one side and his eyes were tired. But he perked up at the sight of his Alpha.

“With my life? Of course. That you’ll let me off from patrol for Spaghetti Tuesdays regularly, nah,” Isaac said, chuckling.

Derek smiled as he walked into the room. “If I could just understand what day it was actually on…” Derek turned around in the middle of the room, his face settling into a determined expression, and gestured to Isaac to take a seat.

“Huh,” Isaac said, taking in Derek’s rapidly changed demeanor, “Your face is more serious than usual. Didn’t think that was possible. What is it?”

Derek looked at Isaac, his brow furrowed, eyebrows intense. “I’ve been given a mission by General Hale.”

“Aha, what does the stick-up-his-butt want?”

Derek glanced at the door as if he expected someone to be there, listening, ready to report back to Peter about the exact nature of this conversation.

“He wants me to infiltrate the humans so I can feed intel back to us.” Isaac’s eyes widened. “And… he wants me to use you as a cover.”

“Wait… what? Derek…” Isaac was scratching at his arms, looking around at the few contents of his room. He had a desk covered in drawings, a bed with a thin mattress and extra blankets Derek had scrounged for him, a lacrosse stick and ball he liked to play with against the wall. “What are you saying?”

Derek sighed. “I need to convince them I’m human. Pete-General Hale has these pills I’m going to take. They’re going to make me feel like shit, but also fuck with their tests if they happen to take my blood work. But… if you’re there, if I tell them I captured you… it would go a long way to getting them to trust me… but I… I have to do this, Isaac, but I just… want to know how okay with it you are.”

Isaac looked up at Derek, stared at him for a long time. When he finally spoke, Derek let out the breath he didn’t realize he had been holding. “You saved me once… more than once. I was a little kid who didn’t understand how to control my wolf. I escaped my father to land in a den of judgmental shifters and you stood up for me. You showed me the beauty of running under a full moon, letting the wolf fill me up, to carry that strength into the daylight. You gave me a family in Erica and Boyd and Malia… we’re the Fail Pack, remember?”

Derek smiled grimly at that moniker, given by his uncle of course, sometime last year when Derek had picked a stupid fight with the Alphas and his pack mates had backed him up. They had gone down spectacularly, but they had gone down together.

“Is there an exit strategy? I mean, I’ll do this for you, Derek, gladly. I just want to know what chances your uncle is giving me.”

“If things go south, I’ll have a signal on me for the first 24 hours while the back-up pack is in range. They’ll extract us if need be. If the first day works out, I’ll lose that signal as a precaution, but still keep in touch with Malia at several rendezvous points we’ve chosen. If I tell her we need an out, General Hale will send us help. As long as I can get you to the edge of the human territory, we will get out. And then… if my infiltration works, if I can play my part well, in a few weeks time, there will be no more human territory. I’ll just be us wolves, finally, as it should be.”

“Us wolves and mutts, you mean,” Isaac said, standing up.

Derek put a hand on Isaac’s shoulder. “Once the humans are gone, I can work with my uncle, get him to understand this second-class wolf shit is pointless. Your service on this mission won’t go unrewarded or unrecognized, Isaac. I promise you that, too.”

Isaac nodded, his eyes glistening with unshed tears. “Is it okay if I’m scared?”

Derek pulled Isaac into a hug. “Yeah, buddy, it’s okay. I’m going to protect you. Trust me.” Derek looked at the wall of Isaac’s room behind Isaac’s head. Drawings of Isaac and the pack, his new family, flowers, moonlit forest nights, the skyline of Beacon Hills from the cliffs in the preserve. Derek hugged Isaac tighter. “Trust me.” _I’m scared, too._

~~~~

Derek was thinking of that moment with Isaac as they stood in the rail yards. Derek had a knife on him, a sad little thing, but something believable that an omega, scratch that, a lone human would have grabbed on to. He had bruises on his face, unhealed courtesy of the mountain ash pills Derek had taken. Something their scientists had cooked up, slow release tablets that would clear out of his system in a day or so, but till then, his stomach would be roiling, he would be unable to shift, and his blood work would come back with a false positive “human” status. This was the first time the pills were being used in the field, so the humans had no idea to look deeper for anything suspicious in their tests. Derek had hounded Jennifer for a half hour about the pills and how thoroughly they had been tested and she had told him, in no uncertain terms, to back off if he didn’t want a full dose of mountain ash to the face. So far, the pills were reacting in the symptoms he had been warned of, so… here went everything.

Derek was pacing slowly back and forth in the rail yards, at the entrance to the dank tunnels that had been caved in at some point during the war. The tunnels reached about thirty feet back, the tracks still intact, before the wall of rubble and concrete blocked it. There was an empty train car that Isaac sat in the doorway of, his neck collared, the metal collar chained to a door handle. Derek was having trouble looking in Isaac’s direction, so he kept his focus on watching for movement to the open spaces south and west of the tunnel and abandoned train cars.

It had been over an hour since they had seen the human patrol catch sight of them and then hightail it back in the direction of the human wall. They had to have been going for reinforcements. Derek and Isaac were sitting ducks here, but they had to stay put, had to see this through.

Derek gripped his little knife tighter and wished for his claws, his teeth, for his stomach to stop fighting him. He had a strange feeling part of it was nerves as well. So much could go wrong.

A rock was kicked behind Derek and he whirled, catching sight of a handgun pointed at his chest. Derek threw his arms up. “Wait, wait, don’t shoot!” he called, his sight consumed by the barrel of the gun. He finally got his vulnerable self together and looked past the gun, to the young man holding it.

He was shorter than Derek. His hair was shorn close to his head. His amber brown eyes were dark and focused, his hands controlled, one long finger over the trigger, the other hand cupping the magazine well to keep it steady. Derek’s gaze hyper-narrowed on the moles on the young man’s face and neck, before snapping back to the gun.

“Hands behind your head,” the boy said, voice sharp and controlled.

Derek complied, glancing back at Isaac.

“What the fu—” the other guy muttered, eyes darting to Isaac. The sight of the teenager in the collar seemed to throw the gun-wielder off track. He took a few steps closer to Derek, angling his body so he could also keep Isaac in view.

The young man finally looked Derek square in the eyes. “Tell me what the fuck is going on here.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone who left such lovely comments! I'm so glad people are enjoying reading this story. Take care.


	5. Surviving Out There

Stiles tried to steady his rapidly beating heart with a long slow exhalation. His eyes flicked between the boy bound by a metal collar to a decaying train car and the older man, arms locked behind his head, staring at him with such an open vulnerable expression. A plea for mercy. A carefully placed façade. A trick.

Stiles gripped the gun tighter, trying to sort through his churning thoughts. The man before him – he had to be in his early twenties, maybe closer to 25 – had a growth of stubble on his face, trimmed neatly. His hair looked soft and wind-blown, even though the rail yards were still, heavy with tension. He had a strong jaw line and dark expressive eyebrows. The stranger looked like he could throw Stiles over his shoulder as if Stiles’ 147 pounds of pale skin and fragile bones were nothing. Stiles swallowed, thinking of ambushes and Scott and how uncomfortable that collar looked and how his back wasn’t covered and how there were so many people back at the hospital who would kill him if he never came home. And underneath all of that, a whisper in Stiles’ subconscious. _Oh shit, he’s hot._

Stiles cleared his throat. “I said… what’s your name?” Stiles hadn’t meant to switch off of repeating his previous directive, but he suddenly needed to know. Who was this guy?

“My name’s Derek. Derek Tate. I-I’m from the outlands. I’ve been traveling a long time.”

The outlands. The barrens. The undisputed territories. Basically swaths of open land between claimed cities where humans had been near eradicated, turned out, where feral wolf packs roamed and patrols of wolves in with the Lycan Regime liked to go for fun. They were hunting grounds, the deserts and forests around cities like Beacon Hills that were near impossible to survive in, if you were human. Stiles narrowed his eyes at this “Derek.”

“No one survives out there. You really expect me to believe you did it alone?” Stiles waited a beat, then interrupted the protests from the man. “Show me your teeth.” Stiles was slowly inching towards the other man, his gun still trained on his chest.

He could see the man visibly swallow, but he bared his teeth, opened his mouth, tilted his head back. He was acting like he had been asked this before. “Take that knife of yours and cut your arm.” Stiles wanted to see if physical pain would cause an instinctual werewolf response, bared teeth and claws, exposed fur and lengthened ears. The other man paused for a moment, then took his knife and drew it across his forearm, a thin, but suitable cut. He did hiss, showing his teeth again, but they were fine, actually cute, like little rabbit teeth. Stiles shook his head. _Focus, dumbass._

“Okay, drop the knife, away from you.”

The other man complied. He put his hands back behind his head without needing to be asked. “I didn’t survive on my own,” the man spoke up, his voice husky, thick with emotion. “I had people… they didn’t make it. We were so close…”

Stiles tried to gauge if they were real tears glistening at the corners of the other man’s eyes. This guy deserved one hell of an award if this was all an act. Stiles gestured with the gun at the collared kid, who was probably his age.

“What’s going on there? Don’t make me ask again.”

Before Derek could speak, Stiles’ Jeep squealed around a building and into the rail yards. Allison hopped out before Danny had fully stopped the car. She went up to Stiles and punched him on the arm, quite hard.

“Don’t you ever do that again! You think you’re a hotshot? That you’re the only one who gets to save Scott?” Allison’s eyes were alight with indignation, with concern. Then she turned her gaze to the two strangers across the way. “What’s going on here, then?”

Stiles sighed. “Was trying to figure that out. This is ‘Derek,’ he’s presenting as human but I don’t know. This all seems a bit weird, right? He says he was surviving out there, with some others, but now…” Stiles looked again back and forth between the chained boy and the man with the piercing stare, that was both vulnerable and discerning. He was trying to calculate the situation just as much as Stiles.

Danny came up to join the two, while Greenberg stayed near the car, watching their rear. “How do we know we can trust him?” Danny said. Danny also had his gun drawn, but pointed down at the ground. Danny was always careful to not be trigger-happy. He was the only one out of the four in their unit who hadn’t killed. Sometimes Stiles envied Danny that lack of blight on his soul, but sometimes he was frustrated that Danny’s pacifist nature was going to be a danger to the unit, to Beacon Hills, one day.

“We don’t,” Stiles replied.

“Thought you’d say that,” Derek spoke up again, causing Allison to raise an eyebrow and Danny’s finger to twitch over his trigger. “So I brought you something.” Derek turned his head back to the chained boy. “He was part of the pack that killed my people. But I also overheard him saying he’s in with the Hale family.”

Stiles’ heart skipped a beat. Derek turned back to stare directly into his eyes. “So…” Derek swallowed. “I figured you guys could use him for information. Maybe he knows something that could help…” Derek trailed off as the trio conferred, whispering to each other.

“It was Peter Hale who ordered the attack on your unit, Stiles,” Allison said, hushed voice controlled but her hands tight, knuckle white, on her bow. “If we have any sort of lead on getting information about the Hale family and what they, and their direct subordinates, are up to…”  
“But this guy could just be saying that,” Stiles hissed.

“We have no way to know until we bring them both in,” Danny said. “We use the wolfsbane bullet on the wolf, and cuff this Derek guy, and take ‘em to the station. It’s up to you, both of you, though, if you want to continue searching out here for Scott. It’s getting late, though, and this was the only area with activity we’ve really noticed today.”

“I think that’s a good idea,” Allison said. “Take them both in, interrogate, decide by the morning where we want to search next.”

Stiles nodded, but then he broke away from the trio, stalked up to Derek, and pressed the barrel of the gun to his head. “Do you know of a Scott McCall? Did you hear that name while your ‘people’ were dying and you were eavesdropping on collar boy?”

Derek’s eyes were trained on Stiles’. Sweat trickled down his brow. He seemed to be focusing on the boy holding the gun rather than the gun pressed between his eyes. “Yes, I heard that name… but I’m not telling you anything until you get me somewhere safe, somewhere inside the walls, ple—”

Stiles whipped the pistol across the other man’s face. He dropped to the ground with a grunt. His eyes stayed closed.

“Stiles!” Allison ran up beside him, giving him a look that Stiles couldn’t quite read.

“You’re right, we should interrogate them back at the station… when I’ve had a chance to calm down.” Stiles was grateful when Danny placed a comforting hand on his shoulder. 

Allison sighed, grabbed Stiles’ gun, and shot at the collared boy. The bullet sank into his shoulder. The boy growled, teeth suddenly sharp and vicious, ears and claws lengthened and hair sprouted across his cheeks, his eyes glowing yellow. Then the light dimmed in them, and the boy slumped forward.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hullo, readers! Apologies it took me a bit to post this but here we go! Two chaps up today :o) Hope you're enjoying how the story is going. I do have my major plot points figured out. Let me know what you think so far!


	6. You're My Son

Derek awoke to find himself in a dimly lit basement cell. He sat upright, then almost fell off the narrow bench, his head swimming. He swallowed some bile. It was a good thing he hadn’t eaten before starting on this mission. His stomach was still a mess from the wolfsbane pill, but it looked like it was doing its job perfectly. The field tests that humans performed on unknowns had gone well. Derek glanced at his elbow where a wad of gauze was taped. Looked like he would find out soon enough if the blood tests were fooled as well.

Derek stood up slowly and made his way to the bucket in the corner. It looked like where the toilet had once been in this cell had been ripped out of the wall, so bucket it was. He pissed, leaning his head against the cool stone, then quickly zipped up and turned when he heard yelling from the stairs at the end of the room. The room was square, four cells occupying each of its corners. Derek was alone down here. As the yelling drew nearer, Derek braced himself for whatever was to come. He also thought of Isaac and hoped he was alright. He gritted his teeth. If anything happened to Isaac, because of his uncle, because of him… Derek palmed the pocket watch in his jeans’ pocket. The beacon was in there, ready to be pressed if he thought this mission had gone too far south. He had to wait though, just a bit longer, see if the humans were really going to believe he was one of them.

The young man who had knocked him out charged down the stairs, taking the last three in one jump. Derek was suddenly aware of the pain in his cheek and eye where the gun had hit him. He had had previous self-inflicted bruises while the wolfsbane was in effect to give the impression of weakness, of humanity, and now there was another added pain on top of them. Not to mention the cut on his arm, which had been covered with some gauze and tape as well. Not the best medic job, but some indication that these humans weren’t out to be unusually cruel, at least to strange humans who were begging for sanctuary.

“Stiles!” This was a thundering yell from the stairs. Stiles stood before Derek, eyes bright with anger. They faced each other silently as an older man in sheriff’s uniform – badge, gun, demeanor – reached the bottom of the stairs and walked up to the young man. _Stiles,_ Derek thought briefly. _What an unusual name. It couldn’t be derived from… no. After all this time, all the rumors…_

Derek tried not to give anything away as he watched what was clearly a heated argument between father and son.

“You had no right to run off like that and _inform no one_ of where you were going, what you were planning! Do you understand what that was like for me? To ask for you, to get back that you were nowhere to be found? Do you understand what that did to _Melissa_?” The sheriff grabbed Stiles’ shoulder, turned the young man to face him. “Look at me when I’m talking to you!”

“You’re not talking, Dad, you’re yelling,” Stiles spoke calmly, although Derek saw the way his jaw clenched when he wasn’t speaking. “You’ve been yelling since I’ve been back, and I’m sorry, really, I am, that we left without telling anyone. But we had good intel, and now we have two perfectly good sources to interrogate, so let me do my job and find us a lead, so we can get Scott back. Or do you think Melissa wouldn’t understand what I’m trying to do here?”

The sheriff was quiet for a moment, still holding on to Stiles’ shoulder. Then he pulled the young man into a hug, a fierce one, as if by holding onto his son this tightly, he could make the rest of this wicked world go away. Stiles didn’t hesitate. He threw his arms around his dad, murmuring “I’m sorry” over and over into his shoulder. Derek finally looked away, taking a step back even, eyeing the bucket of piss behind him. It was strange to be in the presence of such love. The Hale family was broken and small and not one for hugs or even pats on the shoulder. Derek swallowed. He really couldn’t go into this interrogation with a pit of jealousy in his heart. He had to shake this strange feeling off.

The father and son finally separated. The sheriff cradled a hand on Stiles’ face. “You’re my son. Please don’t scare me like that again… I want him back just as much as you, but we need to lean on each other right now, more than ever.” Derek swallowed. This was clearly the sheriff, Sheriff Stilinski, Priority Target 1, the leader of the Beacon Hills Resistance, a man who was a beacon of hope and strength to his people.

And so this was his son. Stiles. Stiles Stilinski. His first name had been unknown, an abundance of errors in whatever paperwork the wolves had managed to scrounge up about him. His nickname was even more so unspoken. This Stiles… he was the best sharpshooter the humans had. The youngest marksman with the highest kill count. He enjoyed this status over members of the Argent family since they had only been in the area for a year, and for other, simpler, reasons. He was reckless and he was lucky. He went for shots from angles and places that defied logic, perched in trees and fire escapes and water towers. He was squirrelly, always slipping away before any wolves that were left standing could follow. He knew Beacon Hills and its secrets, its passages and safe houses. He knew its leaders, his father, stepmother, the Argents who were involved with his brother, intimately. He was the perfect person to interrogate Derek. For Derek to glean information from.

Stiles was Priority Target 2. The boy better known as Son of Stilinski in the Hale camp. Derek remembered his uncle’s tirades. Take the son out, you crushed the father, you destroyed the source of the humans’ hope. Take the Son of Stilinski out, and there was less fire to save Scott McCall, one less reason to keep fighting.

Derek swallowed. He could do this. He was at the beginning of the end. For the humans.


	7. Who Are You?

Stiles spun his chair so the back was facing his subject. He straddled the chair, folding his arms over the back of seat. They had moved to one of the station’s actual interrogation rooms, a two-way mirror gracing the wall behind Stiles. He could feel the gazes of his father, Allison, and Danny on him. It was actually comforting.

The unwavering stare coming from his subject was anything but. Stiles tapped his fingers on the back of the chair, staccato strikes the only sounds in the room. He fidgeted his feet, pointing his toes on either side of the chair a few times. He resisted the urge to scratch the back of his neck, or blow his nose on his shirtsleeve, or lick his chapped lips. He bit the inside of his cheek to finally get himself to speak.

“You said you had heard the name Scott McCall earlier. In what context?”

The man calling himself Derek Tate was bound by metal handcuffs threaded through the chair he was sitting in, which was bolted to the floor. His arms were pulled stiff behind him. Allison hadn’t given him much breathing room, but it wasn’t like his hands were going to turn purple at the wrists anytime soon and fall off. Derek cracked his neck, rolling his head around his shoulders. He sighed.

“The wolf pack that killed my people. They said something about Scott McCall having been captured by General Hale, or under his orders, or something. He’s in quarantine until the full moon which is what… a week from now? If he survives his first shift, well…” Derek seemed reluctant to continue.

“Well, what?” Stiles snapped, suddenly still. He wanted to lunge across the space between him and this Derek and shake him to make the answer come faster.

“I’ve… heard about how they treat… bitten werewolves, mutts, they’re called. Second-class wolves basically… it’s like how they chain us up… those humans they keep alive in the outlands. They collar mutts who don’t fall in line fast enough, until they learn to obey the alphas in the area without question. So Scott… whoever he is to you, if he’s still alive, if he’s resistant to commands…” Derek shrugged. “I’m sorry, this is all just what I gleaned from overhearing. I have no… proof about what’s happening to your…friend?”

The last was a question. The expression on Derek’s face confused Stiles. It was something akin to compassion. Why the fuck would he care about complete strangers? Why was Stiles letting him talk on and on in that infuriatingly smooth voice of his? Stiles didn’t have to respond to his question of the exact nature of Stiles’ relationship with Scott. So he didn’t.

“How long were you in Beacon Hills with that wolf before we came upon you? Where were you before this?” If Stiles could establish some of Derek’s story, his past associations, if Stiles could look into his eyes, so very cruelly blue, and gauge if they were being honest, if what he said checked out with their contacts in other human holdouts… there were so many ifs, but getting him talking was the first step.

“I was north of here…” Derek paused for a moment, seeming to gather himself. “I was at Oak Creek. It’s where I’ve spent half my life. A couple weeks ago, a group of us broke out, made our way south. We… wanted a chance at a different life.”

Stiles leaned back in his chair. He knew his father was sending out a message to their single contact at Oak Creek, a labor camp set up in the early days of the war. Complicit humans had bargained for a scrap of safety by turning themselves in to be controlled by the wolves. Not killed or tortured outright, instead confined and forced to die slow deaths under menial labor and intermittent food lockouts. If this Derek had indeed escaped the camp, Ms. Morrell would be able to confirm it. 

Stiles had never met anyone from Oak Creek. Humans were born and died there. They pleaded for mercy when they were captured and were sometimes sent there to live out their days. No one ever left. This didn’t make sense.

“How did you escape?”

“I don’t really know.”

“Excuse me?” Stiles narrowed his gaze.

For some reason, Derek smiled slightly. He adjusted his expression under Stiles’ stern gaze however. “I was asleep. They pulled me from my bed. They had planned it all out. They got us out during a gap in patrols. We didn’t even have to fight anyone.”

“You’re being awfully vague. Who’s ‘they’?” Stiles cracked his knuckles irritably as he spoke.

“Malia, my sister…” Derek swallowed, closed his eyes for a moment. “Talia, my mother. A few men who I knew but I didn’t know all their names. Boyd. He was a close friend. Like I said, they’re gone now. Do I really have to go into the details?”

Stiles stared long and hard at Derek. Maybe he wasn’t going about this interrogation thing the right way. Maybe there should be more bruised knuckles and broken bones by this point, but Derek had spoken pretty freely so far. And the look on his face… especially when he spoke about his mother. Stiles knew that look, had seen it reflected in the mirror more than once. He gritted his teeth.

“Why Beacon Hills? If you had gone east out of Oak Creek, stayed hidden, you would have maybe made it out to the desert. Hard to survive in, but far less wolves, and beyond that, who knows. Instead you came here. A hub of conflict. Wolves breathing down our necks from every direction. From how I see it, you went from the frying pan into the fire. Wasn’t very smart of you…Why are you here?” Stiles was realizing how still his body was at this moment, not just his extremities, his heart rate was slower. He was waiting with bated breath for Derek’s answer. He didn’t know what he wanted to hear, but any answer would give him the key to this man’s intentions.

“Maybe I don’t feel like being controlled for the rest of my life,” Derek huffed, looking up from where his eyes had been trained on the floor. “Curfews, lockdowns, food rations. Th-that’s no way to live. I wanted the chance to live, for my family to live, in some semblance of freedom… this city is riding the edge of a turning tide in this war. I wanted the chance to see it, to be a-a part of that change. I want to…” Derek seemed to be having trouble spitting the word out. “Help.”

“We have all of that here, didn’t you know?” Stiles shook his head. “You thought, what, that because humans are in charge you’d get to stay up late? Watch taped episodes of _Boy Meets World_ , get your nostalgia on? Are you sure that’s the line you want to go with?” Stiles was still skeptical of this young man, still confused by the genuine emotion he was seeing, and the obvious sense that Derek was holding something back.

Derek was quiet for a moment. Staring at Stiles. Through him. “Why do you fight?” Derek’s voice was soft. Gentle.

Once again, Stiles could feel his father’s eyes on his back. There was really only one answer. “Because when I was nine, I saw my mother ripped to shreds by a wolf. She never hurt anyone. No one deserved what she suffered in her last moments... if your family died in any way like she did, you understand. Is that why you came to Beacon Hills? To fight? Because that’s really all we have in this world. Kill or be killed. Lie down in a labor camp or pick up a gun. Who are you, Derek? A fighter? A survivor?” _Why are you here?_

Before Derek could speak again, there was a rap on the door. It opened. Lydia stuck her head in. “Stiles, we need you out here for the medical report.”

Stiles jumped up from the chair, grateful to get out from Derek’s gaze for a moment. His sharp blue eyes followed Stiles from the room. Stiles could feel them, white hot, staring into the glass. Even though Stiles wouldn’t look back, even though he knew Derek couldn’t really see him through the two way mirror, he could still sense him looking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hullo! I hope everyone enjoyed this chap! Next will be from Derek's pov & a lot of q's will be answered. Hang in there! (It's my mum's bday tomorrow & I have a full shift at wrk so I'm sry if I don't get the next ch posted tomorrow! Day after for sure tho :o))


	8. The Past Bites

Derek let out the breath he had been holding, long and slow, his eyes on the glass the whole time. His heightened werewolf senses were slowly coming back. He could smell several bodies outside the room. He could hear murmured voices but he wasn’t quite back up to par. It was frustrating and nerve-wracking, not having his proper hearing and sense of smell and claws back. If this all went south, if his blood work came back positive, he’d have to continue to bide his time to have the strength to get out. If they gave him the time, the chance. He could still feel the pocket watch beacon on his leg. Derek swallowed. His uncle wouldn’t really condemn him to a death trapped behind enemy lines, would he? Derek’s thoughts turned to Isaac again. He couldn’t even ask how the young wolf was doing since it would certainly throw suspicion on his cover.

Derek went back over the conversation in his mind. Better than dwelling on what might be waiting for him outside the interrogation room. “Derek Tate” was the name they had chosen for him because it was from the pack that he was familiar with, family with, and yet couldn’t be linked to the humans in any way. Boyd, Isaac, Erica – they were all mutts, all had ties to human pasts, last names that might be remembered if the wrong person was paying attention. And Malia, the little coyote, such a powerful shifter, able to become a full _canis latrans_ , who preferred spending time in her full shift rather than be upright around the other wolves that despised her for her “lesser” shift, was like his little sister. Reminded him of his actual little sister, Cora, with her tenacity and smile and teasing shoulder bumps. And her name, Malia… his mother, Talia. A singsong rhyming name pair that made him smile even as it made his heart twist bitterly. 

When Derek had spoken of Malia and his mother and Boyd as family he had lost, just a couple weeks ago in his cover, he was drawing on pain, on a loss, that felt just as fresh. His parents and Cora and several other pack members had died in a fire set at Hale House by Kate Argent when Derek was 16, about eight years ago now. Kate Argent… If she hadn’t already been killed by the Alpha pack a few months after the fire, just days after she had shot and killed his older sister, Laura, Derek didn’t know what state he would be in right now, thinking she might walk through that door. His 16th year had been one loss after another, until he was standing beside his uncle as he received his new rank, assumed command of the various Beacon Hills’ packs, rebuilt the parts of Hale House that had been scorched and turned to ash. He stood on fresh floorboards, smelled fresh paint where once burned flesh had permeated. He had watched and listened to his uncle fire up the crowd. He had believed, until his uncle first struck him, that maybe their little family would be okay. And, although Derek had buried his losses deep, the past still came out to bite him often, in the way his fail pack looked to him to be the strong older brother, in the way his uncle muttered the name “Talia” like a curse when Derek dared to say she might have done something differently.

There was so much riding on this mission. Derek’s standing with his uncle, the end to this war, the future of Derek’s pack mates, this little found family he had scraped together from the lost and frightened youth in the Hale camp. He needed to focus. He needed to make this Stiles believe in him, in his story. Tapping into the well of emotion that the name Scott McCall sparked, that was as good a place to start as any. Derek had been with his uncle when they brought the struggling young man through to the quarantine cells behind Hale House. Had seen the young man’s floppy hair plastered to his forehead with sweat, his particular jaw quirk, the bite in his side. A flash of flailing body parts amid the shouting of the name “Allison!” Derek would have to sniff out that connection as well, possibly exploit it, but for now, Stiles was his focus. Derek’s heart jumped just thinking of him walking back through the door, whether it was fear for his own well-being or something else…

There was shouting through the door suddenly. A distinctly female voice. It was hushed quickly but Derek strained his ears, trying to hear more. The door was opened abruptly halfway, and Derek could see Stiles’ through the gap, his head turned, whispering to someone out of sight. Derek watched the way Stiles’ throat and lips moved as he spoke, the way the light from the hallway haloed his shorn head. Derek clenched his fists in their restraints. Focus.

Stiles turned to him and came through the door, his expression rippling through emotions, hard to read, but definitely less hostile than when he had left. Then, as a female form brushed by him, Stiles’ expression became that of exasperation. “I told you to wait, Allison,” Stiles said, to the young woman with dark, wavy hair.

Derek zeroed in on Allison. On her eyes, sharp and brittle with barely restrained fear and contempt. Her bloodied knuckles didn’t escape Derek’s peripheral vision, even as he didn’t break eye contact with her.

“You might be human, but you _know_ something, something you aren’t telling us about the wolves,” Allison said, leaning into him, a sneer doing nothing to mar her beautiful features, only intensifying the hatred in her eyes. “Your little wolf friend would only tell me Scott's in quarantine. Where are they holding him exactly?”

“Allison,” Stiles said, his voice softer this time, placing a gentle hand on her shoulder. “He’s told us the same thing about the quarantine. If Scott survives his first shift at the next full moon, they aren’t just going to kill him. He’s too valuable as leverage against us and as cheap labor in the meantime. I think—”

“What do you think, Stiles?” Allison snapped, not looking away from Derek. “You were so worried about wasting time earlier in the day. Don’t you think we should get Scott before the next full moon and help him ourselves? The longer he stays a captive, the less likely either of us will see him alive again... still human. I just—” Allison shook her head, backing away from Derek, clenching her knuckles so more blood welled slightly from the broken skin. “I don’t want to do something I’ll regret. But I’m not going. Not until he tells us what he knows.”

Stiles swallowed, looking between his best friend’s lover and their captive. Derek tried to gather himself. This was a golden opportunity. Hook them into thinking he had the information to help them get back Scott and set up a plan to lead them into a trap. This is what he was here for. Taking down the leaders of the human resistance.

But they were all so young. Unexpectedly so. Clearly broken. Fighting for lost loved ones. Taking orders from adults who were just as out of their depths in managing normal familial ties amongst the death and suffering both sides were inflicting on the other. This was insane. Derek looked from the lean young man with his short hair and moles and amber eyes to the fierce young woman beside him, trembling with rage, frustrated at the situation and not afraid to show it. He was not prepared for this. Being confronted with a mirror to his own past.

Derek chose to focus on Stiles. It was easier. There was a glimmer of something in the young man’s eyes that suggested he was willing to hear Derek out. Allison was ready to crack his skull if she didn’t hear exactly what she wanted.

“So my tests came back? Proved I was human?” Derek watched Stiles’ face closely. It was a nice face to look at, especially when it was looking at him with something like hope on it.

“Yeah, the tests say you’re human. And our contact at Oak Creek confirmed there was an escape two weeks ago, but the bodies of some of the escapees were returned a couple days ago. So,” Stiles’ eyes flicked to Allison for a beat, “I’m sorry for your loss,” Stiles finished, looking into Derek’s eyes. Derek swallowed. A Ms. Marin Morrell was a human the wolves rewarded well for keeping things quiet at Oak Creek. It looked like keeping her complicit in the wolves’ activities had paid off. She had backed up Derek’s cover just like she had been ordered to. Derek wondered if she felt as awful as he did right now, sitting amongst humans who trusted them out of necessity, sympathy, and because they believed. Sometimes lies were better than the truth.

Allison folded her arms, digging her nails into her skin. Well, she was one not believing the lies. He had to give them something more.

“Isaac… the wolf I was with, he’s a mutt. He doesn’t seem that bad. I think he was low on the wolf totem pole, and now he’s an omega, an outsider, if anything to them… but we did talk a bit, that’s how come… I don’t hate him,” Derek spoke hesitatingly in part because the sympathy he felt for Isaac’s situation was very real, and to get the humans to think he was afraid to admit any of that sympathy to them. “He told me about how they treated him at Hale House, the wolf headquarters. There are… cells, maybe, a building close by, where they hold people of interest, both mutts and human. So… I’d bet Scott is there.” Derek looked between Stiles and Allison, wondering if he should keep going, how much more he could build this up. Allison seemed to decide something and went to the door, opened it, spoke some rapid fire French at someone outside the room.

“Yes, Ms. Argent,” came the reply.

Derek’s heart thudded at the name. He realized he had become very suspiciously still. Stiles had noticed. “What is it?” the young man said, brows narrowing.

Allison was staring at him, too. Derek swallowed. He had to save it. He had to say the right thing, even if it tore him up inside.

“It’s just, I’ve heard of you, your family,” Derek said, speaking at Allison, staring at her this time, his heartbeat finally under control, but he could feel the ice cold patch of nervous sweat down his back. “The Argents, your aunt… Kate. I think it’s amazing what she did. She saved a lot of people… taking out most of the Hale family the way she did. I just… we should all be thanking you.” Derek lowered his head, in part to seem like he was bowing it deferentially in her direction, in part because he had to reign in the emotions he was feeling. It was one thing to seem grateful to the Argents for their actions; it was another to start crying because those actions had destroyed Derek once upon a time.

Allison seemed to relax, ever so slightly. She tilted her head at Derek. Glanced at Stiles. “I’m going to work on some plans, go over the maps of Hale House and the area we’ve managed to scrounge together. You let me know if he says anything else useful… or flattering.” With that, Allison left, and Stiles and Derek were alone.

It was quiet for a long minute as Derek kept his head bowed, wondering what tactic Stiles would take next. He noticed Stiles move around him. Suddenly his hands were free. Derek brought them around, rubbing his wrists, looking up at Stiles, who was twirling the handcuffs around a raised finger. Stiles caught the handcuffs and became still, watching Derek.

“Your story and blood work check out. You _seem_ like you’re genuine…” Stiles pursed his lips, blew out a huff of breath. “I may have uncuffed you, but I’m not sure what to do with you.”

Derek leaned forward in his chair, then raised his hands in supplication when Stiles made a move to reach for the gun at his waist. “Let me prove myself to you… to all of you. However I can… I want you to know I mean it. I don’t want to just be a survivor, plodding along under someone’s thumb. I want to be a fighter… let me fight for you, Stiles…” Derek swallowed. “Let me prove myself to you,” he repeated.

Stiles nodded, smiled the smallest smile. “Alright then, I think I have an idea.” He went to the door, opened it, gestured to Derek. “After you.”


	9. Kids With Guns

Stiles had Derek in the crosshairs of his gun. He grinned wickedly. It had been too easy to sneak up behind him through the trees. He squeezed the right trigger tenderly, wondering if Derek would turn around, return fire, but too slow, Stiles fired his shot and Derek dropped, his body flailing down the far embankment.

“Booyah!” Stiles cheered, bouncing on the couch cushions as _BilesBilinski sniped Taters_ flashed on the lower left of the television screen. He continued to cruise the map, taking out some bots as he went. He glanced at Derek who was chewing his lip, going through the ammo menu before respawning.

“You really haven’t played any video games before, huh?” Stiles said, navigating the map almost without needing to look at the screen longer than a second. He was watching Derek mostly as they chattered around the ballistics of the game.

“Well… never really had a chance in Oak Creek…” Derek got back in to the game and immediately dropped a grenade near himself. He tried to outrun it but the blast ragdolled his body across the warehouse floor he had respawned in.

“Ohhh, Taters fried himself! That’s rough, buddy…” Stiles laughed a bit at Derek’s screen, then sobered as he took in Derek’s words. “Yeah, yeah, I know… seems like the worst thing about being out there is you’re not playing a fantasy, a fucking video game, you’re living it.” Even as Stiles spoke, he continued to clear the map of bots, smiling ruefully as he took out the high difficulty AI characters. “I don’t know, man, I see the irony in playing violent games when we go out and live it every day, but me and… Scott have a record to maintain. They’re some of the best memories I have, crushing Danny and Jackson in a _Call of Duty_ tournament finals last year. So… it’s just mindless fun, death with a reset button, something we would have had anyway if most of the world hadn’t gone to shit. I’m just glad we found all this working equipment when I was 11. It’s old, the graphics are pretty shit, but it’s… fun.”

Stiles ran out of steam as he talked, wondering what the older man sitting on the single armchair perpendicular to his couch was thinking. They were in the rec room in the basement of Beacon Hills Hospital. Stiles had thought it would be a good idea to take this stranger somewhere less prison-y. The room was a secure place that had been converted into a lounge of sorts for anyone to come and take a breather from the real world. Mostly for the young adults and teens – there was a pool table, some working arcade games along the wall, a small kitchen area, and the console setup that was spread over two flat screens – but there was also a corner filled with blocks and dolls and Hot Wheels cars for the few really young kids in the camp.

This room was also used for the adults in charge to have weekly talks with the youth. These meetings were for anyone to air grievances about the state of things in their territory and to make suggestions or requests that were listened to by the Sheriff and Melissa with genuine concern. Coach Finstock, who was in charge of ensuring all the young people got in proper exercise and weapons training for those old enough, was also present at these meetings but his genuine concern was sprinkled with liberal amounts of sarcasm and friendly name-calling. Stiles thought it was as neutral a place as any to try to get this Derek guy to open up. They were both still testing the waters of this strange situation. The Beacon Hills Resistance didn’t get many survivors through who were willing to fight straight off. Most of them were beaten down, terrified of returning to the outside, eager to work in sustaining the human territory, not in trying to expand or defend it from out there. Stiles was intrigued by this Derek, not to mention a little attracted to the older man. It was hard to not find his furrowed intense brow cute as he continued to suck at the first person shooter.

“How many wolves have you killed?” Stiles asked, then winced. “I know that wasn’t really prefaced. I mean we are playing something that makes it hard to not think about such things, and I know you weren’t out of Oak Creek for that long, but you had that mutt with you… how did that come about?” Stiles started planting a bomb at site A, and thought about Dr. Deaton’s dirty bomb training from a few weeks ago. It was strange how much Deaton knew that seemed so far removed from his veterinary profession, but their weren’t really pets in this world anymore, except for the occasional feral cat that would scratch the hand that tried to lovingly feed it. Deaton taught lessons on field dressing and triage, bomb-making and suture practice, what was safe to eat in the wild; Danny shared his knowledge of mixed martial arts his family had taught him, aside from helping to make sure their electricity stayed up and running; Lydia had the scientific smarts to know what chemicals mixed together would make a smoke screen or a flash bang or a Molotov cocktail if you happened to find those lying around (and a battle at the high school when a couple wolves had breached the perimeter had ended in just such a fashion when they got trapped in the chemistry rooms). 

Everyone had something to bring to the table, or at least the eagerness to learn, to survive better. What did Derek have to share? Was he a wolf-whisperer? Getting a mutt chained up like that couldn’t have been easy.

Derek was silent for a while. The silence was getting so bad, Stiles almost spoke up to let him off the hook. Derek managed to roll behind some cover in the game and grenade a bot and then he seemed capable of speaking up. “I’ve killed no wolves… but I got a girl killed when I was younger. A human girl. She was sweet… pretty and kind. She played the cello.” Derek’s eyes remained focused on the screen. He died walking into a Bouncing Betty. He set his controller down on the low table. “I think I need a break.”

Stiles paused the game, setting down his own controller. “Hey, I’m sorry, man… we’ve all lost people… we’ve all felt responsible for some bad shit in our lives.” Stiles felt like shit having prompted Derek to confess to a specific tragedy in his past. But that was the point of this casual interrogation. Stiles needed to know this stuff about Derek, to better understand if he could be trusted. “You don’t have to tell me about how it—”

Derek was pulling a pocket watch from the pocket of his jeans. “I don’t have a picture of her, the girl, Paige… I do have one of my mother.” He passed over the pocket watch and Stiles took it, surprised by the weight of it. It settled into his palm like an ice cold grenade. When he opened it, it was like an explosion in the back of his mind. He saw his own mother, begging, weeping, protecting him, covered in red. The woman in the pocket watch was smiling. She had blue eyes and dark hair like Derek. Stiles clenched the pocket watch tight, slowly bringing himself back to the present moment. He looked up at Derek and saw the same grief reflected back at him in the other man’s bright blue eyes.

“She’s beautiful,” Stiles said, coughing to clear his throat. He passed the pocket watch back, able to breathe better when it disappeared in Derek’s pocket.

“She died last week. Fell into a spike pit set by the wolves to capture escaped humans like us. One minute she was talking behind me to my sister, the next… there was a firefight a few days ago, against a pack. They killed my sister, Malia, they took out Boyd… it was easy for them. We were just kids with guns. I managed to get away… I hid. Then they tried to lure me out with that mutt. They chained him up to the train car. I waited until they got bored, only took half a day. The wolves picked up and moved on, left the mutt behind… I was trying to decide if I could trust him,” here Derek laughed bitterly, “before you guys showed up. Then I decided I could probably use him to my advantage.” Derek looked at Stiles, his mouth set in a grim line. “I don’t know why I’m still here, and my family isn’t. I don’t know… why you should trust me. But I hope one day…”

Derek trailed off. His hands were balled into tight fists in his lap. He looked down at them with a sigh, slowly opening his fists. He seemed to be staring intently at his fingernails. Stiles watched as Derek ran his tongue over his teeth. Derek sighed again.

“Hey, man, you hungry? I think we’ve had enough heavy shit and stupid video games for one day.” Stiles stood up, stretching, cracking his elbows and fingers as he raised his arms to the ceiling. “Let me show you the kitchens. I’ll make you a sandwich. We might have some beer I can use a ration card on – they try to keep alcohol consumption controlled here although you can find moonshine in every other room. So…” Stiles looked down at Derek, who seemed to be staring at his midsection. “Yo, Derek…”

Derek met Stiles’ gaze again. He looked drugged out, exhausted. “Whoa, maybe I should just show you to your room?” At Derek’s nod, Stiles reached out a hand. Derek took it, his grip firmer than Stiles had expected, the palm callused and warm. Once Derek was standing and Stiles released his grip, moving past him to start leading the way, Stiles flexed his fingers. He was surprised at how much his hand felt too light after touching Derek.

Once in the hallway, Stiles noticed his dad turning the far corner. How long had he been listening? Stiles wondered when they would talk next about the newcomer. He wasn’t surprised the Sheriff had been nearby, to do his own information gathering, as well as to be close in case Derek had turned violent for whatever reason. As Stiles glanced back at Derek, curious to see if the other man had noticed the Sheriff’s retreat, he thought about how Derek’s body language had never seemed violent or even abrasive. The young man was muscular, clearly athletic, but right now, he was dead on his feet, so tired he would probably lie down in this hallway if Stiles told him to.

Instead Stiles led him out of the hospital and down a quiet tree-lined street. Just two blocks west was the perimeter wall, constantly patrolled, a mass of concrete and carefully positioned debris that was great at keeping out lone wolves, the occasional rogue pack, but everyone inside its protection dreaded the day a full-on assault would come from the Lycan Regime. The war was dirty, down in the trenches, decided by grunts and mutts and yes, kids with guns. The humans were smart, resourceful, and apparently not worth the losses the other side would suffer by attacking straight on. So what else could the wolves be planning?

Stiles had a handgun on his waist and a knife tucked into a sheath on one of his legs. He could hear Derek clearly behind him, keeping pace. The night was clear and the stars bright. In a week's time, Scott would be a werewolf. Stiles wouldn’t let that happen. Wouldn’t let his brother go through it alone.

Beacon Hills High was easy to get to. It was still part school, while the gym and some classrooms had been converted into barracks. Curtains and plywood walls allowed for makeshift rooms in the gym. Stiles was grateful Scott’s family home had been inside the lines when the humans had built up their defenses. The Stilinski house had been outside in wolf territory and Stiles had driven by it once to see the burnt out shell of his childhood home. But he was grateful, because it meant the memories of his mother weren’t as close. He had nothing to put at the bottom of a drawer or in the back of a closet to be a constant reminder of his loss. 

Stiles smiled at Danny as he passed his room, a classroom that had once been a music room. Stiles would probably crash there tonight, rather than go home. He figured Melissa could use another night alone with the Sheriff. He couldn’t bring himself to look at Scott’s bed. He had laid awake in it the first night Scott had been taken. Stiles couldn’t do that to himself again.

They finally reached the end of the hallway and a door marked “Lounge 03.” Stiles took out a key, unlocked the door, and pushed it open to reveal a sparsely furnished but spacious room. There was a twin bed made up with a couple blankets and a single pillow. A nightstand with a lamp. A bookshelf with a few paperbacks, several _Goosebumps_ rubbing spines with Stephen King’s _The Stand_ and a huge book entitled _Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell_. They were some of Stiles’ books, but he wasn’t about to announce that.

Stiles tapped a mini-fridge set on an empty counter with a sink, cabinets above holding random supplies gleaned from classrooms. “There’s water in here and in one of the cabinets I’ve stashed some granola bars and dried fruit. Not the most exciting smorgasbord, but… I’m going to have to lock you in, okay?”

Derek had settled on the bed. He nodded at Stiles wearily. “I understand.”

“Well, okay then… hope you sleep… some,” Stiles lips twisted and he backed out through the door. His last glance of Derek was of the other man lying down, wrapping his arms around the pillow.

Stiles locked the door, let the breath he had been holding out. He pocketed the key and made his way to Danny’s room. No words were needed to crash at Danny’s. The other boy wished Stiles a good night’s rest as he continued to tinker at his desk, a light shining on some motherboard-looking piece of electronics. Most of the room was occupied by cabinets and electronic equipment and some riot gear stacked neatly in some bins. A section of the room was designated for Danny’s sleeping area and Stiles stumbled up the wide steps where high school musicians had once sat in metal chairs to the section marked by a curtain on the last tier. He crawled onto the couch pushed perpendicular at the bottom of Danny’s bed, and rolled himself into the blanket there. He closed his eyes, tried to shut off his mind. His thoughts as he succumbed to his exhaustion were of Scott.

His dreams, what he remembered of them when he awoke in the morning, were of Derek.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hullo readers! Just a heads-up, I'll be visiting a close friend out of town this week, so if the next chap isn't up for awhile, my apologies! But it will be Danny/Isaac interaction so yay!! Thanks for reading along so far!


	10. I Remember You

Danny waited to go on his nightly patrol until Stiles was clearly deeply asleep, one leg thrown over the end of his bed, the other having slid into the gap between bed and couch. Danny had learned from previous attempts that there was no point in shifting Stiles’ body to a more comfortable looking position. The young man would just roll into an even more awkward and confusing pose, and in the morning wonder why his neck ached. Danny did mosey up the stairs to check on Stiles and to tuck the blanket back over him. He looked down at Stiles, this young man in charge of so much. He thought of his own projects and perimeter security implementations and subjects to read up on for lessons with Dr. Deaton and Coach and the few other adults willing to impart knowledge in this ghost of a school they were living in. Sometimes Danny felt like lying down in a hole and never getting up. 

He knew of people who took to booze or drugs to cope, but somehow those vices had never pulled him in. So although he allowed himself the occasional day to stay in bed, to curl up with a good album playing softly, to just read a book or sleep and sleep and sleep, he tried to let the people still living be his remedy. He had friends who were his brothers and sisters. Lydia and Stiles and Scott and Jackson… Since Jackson had been placed in his induced coma about a month ago, since it had become known what Jackson’s genetic heritage was condemning him to, that he couldn’t control his wolf and might never be safe around humans, Danny hadn’t slept in or recharged or fallen back in his desire to see this little community thrive in the wake of such suffering. Losing his closest brother, that asshole with an oft hidden but mighty heart, had stopped Danny cold. He couldn’t waste time in bed or hiding behind these walls or looking to anyone to save him from potential wallowing. He had to stay a fixed point, someone dependable and productive. He had to stay alive so he could be there when Jackson was woken up. It would happen. Danny had survived the loss of his parents at a young age, had watched people go out on patrol and never come back. To lose Jackson like this, quietly and without a proper goodbye… no. Just no.

As Danny made his way outside, gun at his side, staff on his back, he nodded at the guards stationed on either side of the door. They were so lucky to have enough bodies to patrol at all hours of the day and night in a watch schedule Danny had worked out. He remembered the close call when an opportunistic roaming pack had found a break in their patrols and attacked the school. Everyone was hyper-vigilant now. But with the new rotations and proper coverage, protecting Beacon Hills properly didn’t necessarily have to be exhausting.

Danny scratched the back of his neck, holding his tongue on the roof of his mouth to stifle a yawn. He knew he couldn’t let himself burn out like this. He was heading to Lydia’s lab at the hospital anyways. Maybe there was something she could spare him so he could force himself to get some rest.

Danny took the stairs two at a time to get his blood pumping. He was light-headed, buzzing, by the time he reached the fourth floor, but it was a good feeling. A welcome feeling of being in his own body, a body that was strong now, no secrets hidden in his blood. Just a young man, a little sleep deprived, pins and needles on the soles of his feet, lungs expanding and contracting, the cracking of his neck as he rolled it around his shoulders a relieving sound. Danny knew his own body. He tried to take these little moments to really feel what it was like to be alive, to be human. He took a deep breath as he made his way down the hallway. He paused outside the door to Lydia’s lab, then moved a bit further to the patient room right next door.

Jackson’s room was softly lit. He had several precious machines hooked up to him to monitor his brain activity and the levels of the drugs in his system. A combination of wolfsbane and propofol was keeping Jackson under. It was a dangerous and frightening treatment plan Lydia and Dr. Deaton had come up with to keep Jackson stable. They were trying to keep him from having adverse reactions to being kept under so long as well as lengthen the amount of time he could be kept on these drugs before his body built up a tolerance. Danny placed his hand over Jackson’s cool one. How had his best friend, his brother been under for a month like this?

“Why’d you do it, man? Why’d you do it without telling me?” Danny whispered. Lydia had reminded him often that patients in comas like this were probably aware of their surroundings, that encouraging words and tones could be beneficial in keeping them stable. “Bastard…” Danny squeezed Jackson’s hand, wanting desperately to feel him squeeze back, to sit up and slug him in the shoulder, to snort at a rare moment of vulgar language from his mouth.

But Jackson stayed still. A sleeping beauty dreaming of snapping teeth and sprouting fur and swiping claws. His face was perfectly still, beautiful, looking so young and peaceful. Jackson was the better off one in this situation. Getting to sleep through all the shit while his friends watched and worried over him. “How could you be so selfish?” Danny always had whispered questions to give, never any answers. He let go of Jackson’s hand to wipe the tear from his cheek.

The soft sigh of the door behind him made Danny start. It was Lydia, still in her lab coat, clipboard in hand, hair a bit limp actually, pulled back in a simple ponytail. “We talked a lot about his options, you know… before he decided to try this. We could have kept him locked up, but every full moon, every single time he got frustrated or scared or angry or let himself slip just a little bit… his wolf is strange, unpredictable, uncontrollable… perhaps because he was never prepared for it, never saw it coming… he was so conflicted over his parentage and then to find out they were the enemy, that they abandoned their child to what? Be executed by the other side? He was a lucky little boy… he’s a brave young man…” Lydia spoke quietly as she walked around the bed to face Danny over their loved one’s body. “We have no one here to teach him how to control it… but we love him. We—” Lydia brushed a trembling hand through Jackson’s hair, that she kept trimmed neatly herself. “We’re running out of time.”

“What do you mean?” Danny’s eyes darted from Jackson’s sleeping form to Lydia’s tired eyes.

“Dr. Deaton has been cultivating wolfsbane for us. We won’t run out of that anytime soon. But the other drugs in the cocktail… we’ll need a supply run soon, very soon… and we’re still both worried about how long he’s been under. It’s not the safest stopgap measure…” Lydia turned as she spoke to check Jackson’s monitor, writing down something on her clipboard. She sighed before continuing. “We can’t do this to him for much longer. There’s just… something we’re missing about wolfsbane and wolf physiology and how… how to help him while he’s awake, so that he can live a normal life.”

“I can-I can get a team together,” Danny realized he had started speaking over Lydia, but he kept going when she gave no response to the interruption. “We can leave in the morning for the drugs you need. There has to be some pharmacy or clinic or hospital _somewhere_ nearby that hasn’t been turned over completely yet.” Danny folded his arms to keep himself from pacing or clawing at his sides or the bed or Jackson’s shoulder. He had had dreams where he was trying to shake Jackson awake, only to catch a flash of crimson eyes, and feel the sting of Jackson’s teeth sinking into his neck.

“Thank you, Danny, but maybe you should sit that run out…” Lydia wasn’t looking at him as she continued to move around Jackson’s bed, running her hands over his extremities. 

“Excuse me?” Danny arched an eyebrow. He hadn’t meant to sound so… indignant, but what could Lydia mean by having him stay back and do… nothing to help Jackson?

“I’ve been observing you, Danny,” Lydia said, stopping beside him, placing a gentle hand on his shoulder so he would look down at her. Her eyes were full of concern and Danny felt awful pulling away from her, but he needed some distance. Lydia kept going. “You’re not sleeping well, if at all. You’re trying to run twelve projects at once. I can’t remember the last time I saw you at the library just relaxing with a book at the window seats like I know you love. You’re too stressed, too overworked, too… close to this. Let someone else take the risk… just this one thing. For you--so you can stay here with Jackson--with me… you’re not alone in missing him.”

Danny stared down at Jackson, not really seeing him through his unshed tears, his buzzing brain. Danny wiped a forearm over his face and shook his head, shook out the tremors, the bad thoughts.

“I have to finish my rounds. If you think I shouldn’t go tomorrow, I won’t, just pick a good replacement.” Danny made his way for the door, skirting around Lydia’s outstretched hand. “I’m sorry, Lyd, I just… not right now.” Danny couldn’t stand to be hugged right now by someone he cared about so much, next to his brother, asleep and blissfully unaware of the pain everyone was in because of him. He had to keep moving.

Lydia called something after him, but he was already through the door for the stairs. He trekked outside, keeping his eyes moving, open, focusing on different points in the perimeter and surrounding houses. He skirted around the bank that the Argents called their base of operations. There were tall, gruff looking men in black uniforms and body armor patrolling the building. The Argents were the elite humans in the Beacon Hills Resistance, willing to work together on certain missions, on protecting the territory perimeter, but often doing their own shit, sending out their own patrols for secret missions and bringing back wolves for interrogation or study. Danny wondered how much they were collaborating on Lydia for a cure. If they even gave a shit about curing lycanthropy, given that it was their family business, their very creed to kill every wolf out there. Danny was grateful Allison was one of them, understood the reasons a few Beacon Hills students wanted to protect and save Jackson Whittemore from himself.

Danny shook off the strange vibes he got from the Argent bank HQ as he got further away from it and closer to the police station. He entered after exchanging some pleasantries with Deputy Parrish at the front entrance. Parrish was one of the few outsiders who had made his way to Beacon Hills years after the Lycan overthrow. He was a good man, smart and skilled at defusing dirty bombs. He had proved his loyalty time and again in the last year or so. He might not have been born here, it might have seemed unbelievable at the time of his arrival that anyone could have survived on the outside for so long on their own, but he had passed all the tests and continued to show that he wasn’t just a good soldier. He was a good friend and was slowly being groomed as a right hand man for Sheriff Stilinski. Danny always felt comfortable around him, happy to see his smiling face when he visited the station. Danny’s face turned grim, however, when he made his way down the hallway. He came to a locked door flanked by two guards. It was a utility closet. There was what sounded like muffled sobs coming through the door.

“Tara, Braeden.” Danny nodded as he named the two women guarding the door, the first in a deputy uniform, the other wearing a leather jacket and dark jeans and a wicked smile. Tara was a long time member of the Beacon Hills police force; Braeden was a young mercenary-in- training with the scars cutting through her beautiful face to prove she had seen some action and lived to tell the tale. “Can I see the prisoner? I understand Allison Argent interrogated him earlier. I would like to… try my own tactics to get him to talk.”

Braeden tilted her head in Tara’s direction. “I don’t know, Danny Boy. I know you got this awesome title being head of perimeter security and all, buuuuut I’ve seen this kid. He’s not talking. Just whimpering.”

Tara frowned at Braeden’s blunt words. “We’ve been leaving him food, giving him water, a few blankets… the Argents wouldn’t let us move him, though, and I’m not sure they’d be happy to have you talk to him… they didn’t say who to keep away, though.” Tara shrugged. “Ten minutes?”

“Why are you looking at me?” Braeden laughed. “I’m the subordinate here. He’s the random kid here to look at the captured mutt. If you wanna let him check it out…” Braeden looked back at Danny. “You really think you can get him to give anything up about the wolves that turned him?”

Danny shrugged in return. He hadn’t really known he would end up here, at this particular room in the station tonight, but it had been in the back of his mind all day. Ever since he had seen the golden haired mutt slumping forward with a bullet in his shoulder.

Tara was unlocking the door for him. “Ten minutes. We’ll go for coffee. See you in a few.”

“Don’t work him over too hard, ‘kay, D?” Braeden laughed again, lightly bumping his shoulder as she passed.

Danny took a breath before walking through the door in to the small utility closet, a single light bulb illuminating the cluttered space. There were shelves on either side of the narrow hallway-like room that extended back about six feet. A water heater stood in the left corner, a bundle of blankets was thrown in the right. At first Danny thought the room was empty, then he realized the lump of blankets had feet.

“Hey…” Danny crouched down after pushing the door shut behind him. “Hey… my name’s Danny…. what’s yours?”

The lump of blankets shifted as slightly shaky hands pushed a head of golden curls free from the pile. “Hey…” the mutt’s eyes were bloodshot. Danny could see the faint hints of bruises on his cheekbones.

“You’re taking a while to heal up completely,” Danny stated.

The mutt’s eyes flicked to him, deep blue and beautiful, catching the light. Danny swallowed. “I just… wanted to ask you a few things. But you only have to answer what … you’re capable of answering.”

The mutt tilted his head, his expression blank, but the pose still quizzical. Cute.

“Do you… want me to know you name?” Danny carefully sat down on the ground, crossing his legs to get more comfortable. “Shit, it’s kind of cold in here.”

The mutt sniffed. “They gave me blankets… I don’t think that Allison chick likes me very much.”

Danny winced. He could never understand why the Argents were so quick to meet every issue with violence. “She’s very… concerned about someone we’ve lost… to your side.” Danny was trying to choose his words carefully, but also stick to what he considered truths at the moment… unless this mutt said differently.

“They’re not my ‘side,’” the mutt coughed. “I’m a mutt. We don’t have a side.”

Danny leaned his head back against the door, sighing. “That’s what I thought,” he said, catching the gaze of the mutt again, trying to hold it but the other boy looked away after too brief a time. “We don’t know as much as we’d like about wolf culture… but bitten wolves and outlier shifters… we’ve heard rumors about what happens to them, how they’re treated…”

The mutt’s hands became visible through the blanket, gripping some of the material tightly. “What game are you playing at,” the young man hissed. “Why are you being…”

“Decent? Compassionate? … Sympathetic?” Danny leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, chin in hand. “I remember you.”

At this simple statement, the air in the room became very still, as if both of the boys were holding their breaths. The mutt looked up at him, eyes glistening with unshed tears. Fear and confusion rearing up in them.

“Don’t be afraid of me, please…” Danny whispered, suddenly finding it hard to speak. His mind was buzzing trying to figure out what to say. “We were really young. You… were really young. Your father hit you… Lahey was it? You ran away… People thought you were dead.”

The mutt swallowed, his lips parted slightly in disbelief.

Danny decided to just keep going. To let a bit of himself out into the world he had been holding back for so long. “I get it. I really do. You went out there to find someone to give you the bite? You turned to save yourself…” Danny sat up straighter, started rolling the hem of his shirt up. At the mutt’s widened eyes, he raised a hand in a calming gesture. “I’m just showing you something.” Danny pulled his shirt up high enough to reveal the scars on either side of his chest. “These scars are from a surgery I had to correct misshapen cartilage I was born with. I had a bar put in when I was 14. It stayed there for two years to support my sternum, so my heart and lungs wouldn’t be crushed… I’m incredibly lucky that people like Melissa McCall are on my side. That she had a team ready and the materials needed to save my life… but my whole life… growing up in this shitty world, this whole time… I’ve wished I could have just done it. Accepted the bite. No more frightening surgeries, no more sickness, no more waiting to die under tooth or claw or bullet…” Danny let his shirt drop, sighing. “I know it wouldn’t be that simple… nothing ever is. You escaped your father, but you’re still treated like shit… And sometimes I don’t really want those scars to disappear. They make me feel like a survivor… But always _surviving_ … not really living… it’s exhausting.”

Danny was silent for awhile, just listening to the other boy breathing, watching him look anywhere but at Danny. Danny had never told anyone these particular conflicted thoughts of his. He wasn’t really sure why he had told this boy who was a stranger to him, someone from Beacon Hills’ past that no one had really missed. But it had felt… good, really good, to just say the words.

The other boy had whispered something. “What?” Danny leaned forward again, trying not to invade the boy’s space, just wanting to hear him better.

“Isaac,” the other boy repeated, louder this time, his voice breaking at the end of his name. “My name is—”

There was a rap at the door and it was immediately pushed inwards, bumping into Danny’s back. He stood up, banging his shoulder on the door handle, wincing. “Sorry, sorry,” Braeden said, stepping back from the door, her eye in the gap taking in the form of the mutt—Isaac—on the floor and Danny’s form almost hidden behind the door. “Huh,” she said, glancing back Tara’s way, “he really did have some different tactics going on.”

Danny rubbed the back of his neck. He should have asked more questions. He shouldn’t have used this other boy, this Isaac, as his own personal confession booth. But his time was up. “Thank you,” he said, his voice rough, as he looked down at Isaac. The young man had a bewildered look on his face. Danny didn’t know what else to say, so he turned, putting his hand on the doorknob.

“Wait!” Isaac said, lurching upright, the blanket sliding to his feet. Danny took in the state of his bloodied shirt, spray from his nose probably, a jagged round hole in the shoulder where the bullet had been. At his hands, bound in silver. Danny turned his gaze to meet Isaac’s intense, pleading stare.

“Will you come b-back? … See me again?”

Danny swallowed. He wondered briefly what Tara and Braeden would make of this, if they would report it to anyone, if they even knew what “this” was. He sure as hell didn’t. “Yeah… yeah, I’ll come back, Isaac.”

Danny glanced around the tiny closet again. Nodded his head. Glanced at Isaac with a small smile. Backed out of the space. Sighed heavily.

Tara and Braeden were staring at him. He shrugged past, calling back without another glance, “Make sure the kid eats something, and drinks some water.” At the turn in the hallway, Danny paused. Looked back. “And you contact me if the Argents plan on doing anything else to him.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hullo readers! I'm having a lovely time visiting my friend, but I did find time to write up this chapter! Just a little thing - I do prefer to write shorter chapters & post regularly rather than longer chs that might take me longer to get posted. Soooo enjoy this longish Danny/Isaac chap & let me know what you think! Also BASTIIIIIILLE concert tonight sobsob & a couple more days w my friend so the next ch might take a little while but then I should be back on a regular every other day posting sched. Take care!


	11. Not Like This

Derek awoke to find himself tangled in the blankets, drenched in sweat. He stumbled from the bed and to the fridge, downing one of the bottles of water there in several seconds. His dreams had been mottled, flame and smoke-riddled, screams still echoing in his ears. He hadn’t even been there when Hale House had been reduced to ash and bone. And yet he was haunted in his dreams by that night, a palimpsest of images gleaned from witnesses, reports, his own imagining. He tossed the empty bottle in a trash can and turned a few times in anxious circles.

The pocket watch glinted at him under the bed, cheekily. He slowly bent down, opened it. He had been behind enemy lines over 24 hours. He hadn’t activated the beacon. The mission was to go forward now. The picture of the woman smiled at him from the inside of the watch. It was not one of his mother. The only photograph Derek had of her he kept hidden under the floorboards of his room. Away from his uncle’s gaze. His uncle had suggested the photo idea, a sympathy play, before he had left. It had seemed to work. No one was without a loss of some kind in this camp; half the children here were down one parent or full orphans. Derek clenched the pocket watch in his hand, easily crushing it. It looked like his strength was back.

He couldn’t toss the watch in the trash as easily as the water bottle. He opened up the cupboards and found a can of soup. Flexing the fingers of his left hand, Derek had to concentrate more than usual, but his claws extended soon enough, making his hand feel whole again, less like it had fallen asleep, buzzing with pins and needles. He drew a claw around the can rim, pushed up the lid, drank the soup, cold and chunky. He could feel the contents of the soup pooling in his empty stomach. He’d probably wipe out the contents of the cupboards by morning. Once the can was empty, he dumped the watch in it, flipping the can lid over and pushing it down to cover the pieces. Then he dumped that in the trash and continued to peruse the cupboards, eating granola bars and the dried fruit, throwing the wrappers on top of the can as he went.

The young man with the shorn hair and moles, who had bested him at a violent game and pulled words from his mouth he never thought he’d utter to anyone, least of all a human, was not far buried in his thoughts as he paced slowly around the room, loosening his limbs and shaking out the nervous energy that was coming back to him. _Stiles_. It had felt almost normal, sitting on those couches with him, listening to his laughter as he won another round. Derek had caught himself sinking into the cushions, gazing too long at the younger man’s exposed midriff, had caught himself playing at a game that he wasn’t fucking here for. He had had flings back in wolf territory that had ended abruptly and probably for the better. _Jennifer_. A beauty of dark hair and blue eyes, whose smile always seemed to crawl into a sneer during their arguments, over family, age, even understanding idioms (she had always had a gift for the English language, but this world of theirs had forced her into a lab rather than a classroom).

He could still feel the hot gush of blood on his clawed hand after falling for a human, after his uncle had encouraged him to turn her, a strange gleam in his eye Derek had determinedly ignored, in the throes of young puppy love. _Paige_. She had been the daughter of Beacon Hills’ mayor, back when they had still had a mayor, so she had been afforded some protection and respect, as negotiations for a truce had been proceeding along timidly. They had met in Oak Creek, kissed over her cello after he complimented her playing. She had died under an ancient, cut-down tree, in the dark and the dirt, amongst roots and crawling things in a hole in the ground. She had rejected the bite, even as her eyes pleaded with him to do something, anything, to stay with her to the end. She was in his dreams almost every night as well.

_Paige. Jennifer. Stiles_. Derek physically shook his head, rolling his neck around his shoulders. He needed to think of him in the proper context. _Priority Target 2_. He needed to focus on what to do about Allison Argent. The Hale camp had her lover; the Hale family would love to see her dead for what her aunt had done. If they were going to try to assault Hale House to get to him, Derek needed to pass along this intel, needed to make sure his pack was ready for this righteous kill. His thoughts whirled, back to Stiles’ jaw and eyebrows and lips. 

Isaac had kissed Derek once. Back when Derek had first been helping him with the shift, under the silver blanket of a full moon. Isaac had profusely apologized when Derek had stood there, stiff, unresponsive, had blamed it on the moon and hormones and stupidity. Derek had finally spoken, calmed him down, told Isaac it was nothing to worry about. Derek touched his own lips now as he had done later that night of the kiss, and felt again the simultaneous suppression and overwhelming sheer _feeling_ of such unsafe thoughts. He gritted his teeth, bared his fangs to the empty room. _Not like this_. He would not fall apart on this mission for something so remote, so off-kilter, a yearning that didn’t even register in his tangled dreams.

~~~~

Stiles tiptoed out of Danny’s room the next morning, after jolting awake with a snort and a toss of a pillow, finally looking to his right to discover Danny curled up in the adjacent bed. He made his way to the cafeteria, where the meal was slop covered in something that wished it was gravy with a side of nice greens from their garden and milk from their goats. The deer that Allison had helped bring back and butcher would be prepared tonight, first come, first served. The quality of the food they had, from the outside, from their own garden and livestock, varied, but today was a pretty good day.

He plopped down besides Allison and her father with a not-so-forced grin. He loved the smell of annoying Chris Argent in the morning. “Did we get some melty cheese topping this morning, Mr. SARgent-o, or—” Stiles pulled his spoon from his tray, trailing stringy orange something out of his portion of oatmeal, “—is this something unclassifiable?”

Allison hid her smirk behind her curtain of hair, while Argent clucked his tongue. “Good to see you finally up, Stilinski.”

“What? It _is_ the buttcrack of dawn right now and you know it.” Stiles looked at Allison. “How are we looking on the Hale House raid?”

Allison swung her hair over her shoulder, glancing at her father. “We have the plan almost finalized for an assault in two day’s time, but…”

Stiles looked between the two of them, Allison watching her father, Argent staring hard at Stiles. “What?”

“Some of us don’t think you’re a fit for the op,” Argent said, his eyebrows raising slightly, his expression amused at Stiles’ mounting anger.

“You’re kidding, right? You’re just as emotionally compromised as I am, Allison,” Stiles said, figuring the only one worth appealing to at this table was her, “and I bet you’re going. I bet you’re in the front fucking line.” Stiles pushed his tray of food away, ready to stand up and bolt out of there and what, cry to his father? If the consensus was he shouldn’t be on this mission, how the fuck could he fight that?

“I understand what you’re feeling right now, Stiles, truly,” Allison said, her eyes pleading with him to stay. “But we’re afraid that, well… you were there when Scott fell. I-we-we’re better at compartmentalizing. Us Argents. I know that when I go out there, when I see him, whatever state he’s in, I’ll complete the mission. But you…”

Stiles stared hard at Allison. “You think I can’t handle it. You think it’ll be better for me to wait here, worrying over how all of you are doing, hating myself because I’m not there to help? Are you freaking kidding me?” Stiles kept his voice level as he spoke, trying to keep his thoughts from scrambling off into the ceiling. “You’re just as human as I am.”

Argent cleared his throat, causing Stiles to flick and center his gaze back on the older man. “That would be where you’re mistaken, young man,” Argent started, ignoring the gentle hand Allison placed on his forearm. “You might have grown up in this world, learned at a young age what it means to have death sweep through your town, your family, your heart. But… ‘us Argents,’” Argent nodded his head at Allison, swept a nonchalant arm to the other tables nearby populated by Argents, some having arrived just last week, “death is in our blood. We are born hunters, soldiers; our women are born leaders, strategists. We live, breathe, and shit werewolf scum, and none of us will sleep in, or rest, until they are finally eradicated. This is our work, our life, our blood. You might understand a sliver of our passion, but you will never be one of us. Not like this,” Argent gestured to Stiles’ form. “Not when you’re shuddering with indignation and outrage, instead of just taking your place when the time comes.”

Stiles’ hands were clenched into fists under the table. He stilled himself, uncomfortably aware of the sneer on his face, of how he was so close to losing control. He hated most that he understood everything Argent was saying. He couldn’t turn it off. This shaking. This feeling of helplessness. The fact that he wasn’t the man to save Scott. Not at this moment.

A hand, warm and gentle, settled on his shoulder. Stiles looked up into his father’s grimly smiling face. “I’m going to borrow my son for a moment, Chris. Allison.” Sheriff Stilinski nodded to the two Argents, guiding Stiles up and out of his seat. Stiles didn’t look back at them, wondering if the hot bloom of shame over the back of his neck was physically noticeable.

“So, tell me about our new refugee,” Stiles’ father started right in on it as they made their way out of the cafeteria. They often had talks like this, on the move to the next building or meeting or op briefing. “What vibe are you getting from him so far?”

Stiles chewed his lip. Tried to gauge what was the most important part about this Derek Tate that his father wanted to know. He certainly wouldn’t be interested in Stiles’ assessment of Derek’s attractiveness. The Sheriff knew his son wasn’t straight; he had walked in on Stiles in compromising positions with both female and male partners. Stiles mostly kept to himself, had always felt awkward around potential partners, often out of his depth. But this was the fucking end times. He didn’t want to go out without some experiences and had been pleasantly surprised to find willing partners when he started putting himself out there, first with the confidence boost alcohol provided him, then just sussing out connections he could tell would be fruitful, even if only for a night. Those times where his father had interrupted had been mortifying, but easily brushed under the proverbial rug. So… no, he would not start off with telling his father that the new guy was cute.

“He’s definitely suffered like most of us have… he’s lost folks as recently as a week ago. That mutt he was running with was just an opportunistic thing. Derek was trying to use him as leverage with humans once the wolves had done with him. So… I figured maybe we could do a trial by faux fire with him, like you did with Parrish.” Stiles went through the door of the school first, holding it open for his dad. He flashed a small smile at him as the Sheriff walked through.

When Parrish had seemed genuinely human and for the cause, the Sheriff had still run him through a trial mission, although Parrish hadn’t known it at the time. They had made the set up that a dirty bomb was on a bus that had just returned from a supply run. Parrish had gone on the bus, disabled the fake bomb easily, had radioed that the bomb had seemed strange, faulty if not just a scare tactic. After a brief period of radio silence, he had made his way off the bus to see the Sheriff held at gunpoint, hooded figures, human or omega wolf bandits, it didn’t matter. Parrish hadn’t hesitated. He had dived behind cover, fired off shots, the rubber bullets in his gun causing the assailants to flop to the ground comically. When the truth had come out, from the Sheriff himself, Parrish had been somewhat miffed, but had understood that they had been testing his thinking under pressure, aside from his desire to protect or betray his new family.

“Perhaps not so high-stress a scenario… I’ve watched Derek myself in the interrogation _and_ with you,” Sheriff Stilinski threw an arm around his son as they made their way down the street towards the station. “Briefly. Why don’t you take him out on a two person patrol? We’ll put a tail on the both of you, just in case, but it’ll make him think we’re willing to give him a modicum of trust, and you can continue to learn more about him. What does he want from joining us in Beacon Hills? Community? Safety? Vengeance?”

“He wants to prove himself to us,” Stiles replied. _To me_. “I think he wants to help us in the fight. Not so much vengeance. He wants peace… I could see it in his eyes.” Stiles rubbed the back of his neck and rested his hand on his father’s hand on his shoulder. They separated when they reached the police station doors.

“Alright, later this afternoon, you can take him out on patrol. Don’t give him a weapon,” the Sheriff ruffled a hand over Stiles’ head at the young man’s eye roll. “I’ll put Parrish on following you both. Show him a bit of our territory, what we’re all about here… we have that mutt as well to deal with. You can let Derek know our feelings on that. I’m going to have a talk with the young Isaac -- I believe his name is -- myself today. See how he feels about a more comfortable cell.”

Stiles nodded. The cell would come with conditions but it also wouldn’t be a claustrophobic closet. 

“Oh, and you should talk to Danny before you head out. There might be a mission you can join up with from him, something that’ll keep your mind off everything with Scott, but you know…”

The Sheriff paused, and Stiles filled in the gap. “So I won’t feel so useless?”

The Sheriff smiled grimly at him. “Don’t think of it that way, Stiles. You’re a hero. Every day you get up and out there…” His father smiled more broadly at him, nodding, clapping a hand to his shoulder. “You were ready to punch Argent, weren’t you?”

They both laughed. The Sheriff continued to chuckle as he went through the police station door. “I’d like to see that one day.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry for how long this took me to post! Got back from my trip & wrk has been annoying & I'm gearing up for a move & & hope this chap was worth the wait! Still in the set-up for a few things. Let me know what you think & thx for reading along so far <3


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